The LLama Butchers

A Matter of Blogging Credibility

I find this whole blogging in pajamas thing to be hilarious. But now Nicole at Potomac Ponderings has taken it up a notch by claiming that she sometimes blogs naked.

Which makes us Llamas wonder: Is it time to start demanding proof of these claims?

(Yips! to Stephen Green, who's got some pretty serious eye-candy of his own.)

Gratuitous Llama Movie Reviews

It looks like Liz at Truly Bad Films is going to be back in business soon. In the meantime, I thought I'd give you some brief thoughts on the movies I wound up seeing this past weekend:

Joe Kidd - Not a great Clint western, but not absolutely the worst either. Robert Duvall is appropriately sinister and Eastwood gets some decent one-liners, but altogether there is an air of 70's-ishness about it that I don't much like. Best scene: Where the bad guy Mingo is sniping long distance at Kidd, Luis Chama and their party. I love the way the bullet hits long before you hear the report of the gun. But when Kidd shoots back with his own rifle, you see the crosshairs lined up on Mingo's chest. Given the distance and the fact that Mingo is up on a ridge, I'd think Kidd would be lucky to knee-cap him with that shot. To quote The Duke in one of my favorite westerns, "Windage and elevation, Mrs. Langdon. Windage and elevation."

Who Framed Roger Rabbit - Lileks wrote about this movie a couple weeks back, thereby planting in my brain the urge to see it again. I agree with James about the way classic cartoons celebrate their roots in 40's culture and appreciate the movie's effort to capture this in a kind of Toon Film Noir, but it left me pretty flat for all that. The rabbit is too goddam energetic and dopey. And to we really need to see Bob Hoskins' hairy back?

The Patriot - If you've got the hots for Mel Gibson, by all means drool away. But as a depiction of the Revolutionary War? Gimme a break.

EXTRA TEE-VEE SHOW REVIEW: I have to confess that I think The Fairly Odd Parents is very funny. Not that I think it's especially improving for kids, just that I think it's funny. My six-year old and I were watching an episode last evening where Timmy and the OP's pop into various other classic cartoons - Charlie Brown, Flintstones, Space Ghost, etc., etc. Plenty of good, snarky humor.

Tim? Tim Gore?

Have you seen this AP photo of AlGore? Creepy. He looks more to me like the bastard love-child of Gore and Tim Russert.

I reckon the reemergence of Gore as an attack dog pretty much signals the kiss of death for the Kerry campaign. He tends to have that effect.

UPDATE: Vodka Boy is channelling a different doppleganger. And James Joyner is running a Caption Contest.

Chalk And Cheese Book Reviewing

I'm currently reading two books new to me, one in the evenings and the other on my daily Metro commute.

My evening read is The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico by Bernal Diaz del Castillo. Diaz, after having gone on two other exploratory expeditions from Cuba to the Yucatan, was one of Cortez's soldiers in the campaign against Montezuma and wrote a gripping eye-witness account of his adventures. (Victor David Hanson cites to Diaz's account a great deal in his chapter on the fall of the Aztecs in his Carnage and Culture.) The prose style is extremely dry and straightforward, a soldier's story of what he remembers. In this, Diaz reminds me very much of other soldier-writers like Caesar and Xenophon. Nonetheless, it is absolutely fascinating. At the moment, I am reading of Cortez' contact with various Indian tribes that were sick and tired of the Aztecs' hegemonic cruelty and were eager to ally themselves with a power they thought capable of taking down Montezuma. So much for the myth that the New World was a garden of peace and love before the Eviiiiil Europeans showed up.

My commuter book is James Fenimore Cooper's The Wing and Wing, a novel about the adventures of a French Privateer during the Napoleonic Wars. Talk about radically different styles! While I am hoping to find a lot of good, meaty action in this book, I am chagrined by Cooper's tendency toward long-windedness and a certain air of superiority. Dayum, the man takes a long time to say anything - and to make sure that you know that he knows all about it! His description of a lugger making its way into the harbor at Elba is practically in real-time.

The only other book of Cooper's that I've read is Last of the Mohicans, which was not only long-winded, but pompous and sanctimonious as well, wallowing as it does in a good deal of Noble Savage goo-gooism. I reckon that I'll at least be spared the sanctimony here, since he's talking about the French, the British and the Italians. As for the long-windedness, eh, I've got time.

UPDATE: Outstanding! Don at Mixolydian Mode left a comment linking to Mark Twain's opinion on the writings of James Fenimore Cooper, widely regarded as one of the funniest pieces of literary criticism ever penned, and no less so because Twain is absolutely right. Thanks, Don!

Khaaaaaan!

What happened to all those millions over whom I once was a prince?

KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! - Pure coolness...as far as
Trek goes, anyway. 'Nuff said.


What Star Trek Movie Villain Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Yips! to Phil at Shades of Gray.

Holy Baying Bloodhounds, Batman!

Kevin at Wizbang has some interest information about who might be behind the forged docs.

We Llamas want to know what color pajamas Kevin is wearing.

Han is My Co-Pilot

Last week, Sheila was musing on the top five moments in the original Star Wars trilogy. Her post garnered some interesting responses, as usual.

I got thinking about this because there is one moment in the original Star Wars movie that has a keen practical application in my own life. (WARNING: EXTREME GEEKINESS AHEAD. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.)

You see, I really hate flying. In fact, I'm quite frightened of it. It isn't the rational kind of fear about terrorists and airline safety compliance issues. It's the irrational kind of fear that says the only thing that keeps the wings from falling off the plane is the force generated by the clenching of my stomach muscles.

I especially hate take-off. There is something about that feeling of finding yourself helplessly in the grip of an inevitable series of events that will result in your being catapulted into the sky that adds a shot of extra spice to my already considerable anxiety. But I have found a way to deal with it, thanks to Star Wars.

Just before we start the roll-out, I flip back in my mind to the escape of the Millenium Falcon from Mos Eisley. I run the film right from the point of "Stop that ship! Blast them!" with extra emphasis on the musical score and the sound effects. By the time the Imperial cruisers have been outrun and the Falcon kicks into hyperdrive, my own jet has completed the worst part of its climb and I can relax just a bit.

Call it what you want, but it works.

Sweeeeeet...

Mr. Enoch Soames, Esq., brings word of a new Tom Wolfe novel! Looks like Wolfe is tilting at the Ivory Tower this time around. I, for one, am quite excited about this. (For all of you faithful readers who know the real Stanley Ipkiss behind the Robert the Llama Butcher mask, I'd point out that it's never too early to be thinking about Christmas presents.......)

As it happens, Wolfe is an alum of Washington & Lee University and spoke at my law school commencement there. I got the curious sensation that half the faculty - ardent libs, most of them - didn't really know much about Wolfe's writing or what to expect from his address. What a show! Wolfe launched into a withering damnation of campus political correctness and virulent multi-culturalism that had jaws swinging on the stage inside of five minutes, but that had the (mostly) conservative student body grinning from ear to ear.

I'm guessing this latest book is going to have a healthy dose of those sentiments in it.

More Beethoven Blogging

The O.F. weighed in with some comments on my remarks about Beethoven over the weekend and also forwarded this interesting piece on old Ludwig Van's 5th Symphony, providing not just background but also a survey of current recordings. It's quite interesting and informative if you like this kind of thing. (As a footnote, I know why the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique nearly beats Toscanini himself for speed - John Eliot Gardiner, for reasons known only to himself, takes the second movement waaaay too fast.)

I suppose I should clarify that what I was getting at earlier about Beethoven's music was the underlying sense of the presense of a large, if somewhat insecure, ego. The article discusses this a bit in its brief outline of the rise of Romanticism. I should also clarify that I don't hold this against Beethoven's music, rather just that I am aware of it while listening.

On the whole, I don't much care for Romanticism precisely because it invites an artist to indulge in the worst sort of self-centered bloviation. (Yeah, I'm talking to you, Percy "Bysshe" Shelley! I got yer unacknowledged legislator right here, pal!) I don't think Beethoven overdid this. But I sometimes wonder how much of his restraint was a product of the fact that he was an early innovator coming out of the Classical tradition. A Beethoven writing, say, forty years later would have produced a completely different kind of music and I wonder how much of a brake he would have maintained on his inner demons in such circumstances. Not much is my guess.

Also, as a matter of general temperment, I usually find the shouting of naked feelings from the rooftops to be rather ickey-pooh. (Not in the street, children. It will frighten the horses.) Every now and then I wallow in it myself, of course, but I just can't take all that emoting on a day to day basis. I suppose this is why the bulk of the music I listen to is from the Classical, Baroque and earlier periods and why I listen to more modern music relatively less often.

UPDATE: Following Fausta's comments back to her site, I found this nifty post on piano playing. I'm in total agreement with much of what she says and often paraphrase Oscar Wilde when asked why I don't play for people: The trouble with sight-reading is that when one plays well, nobody listens. And when one plays poorly, nobody talks.